Also, take note how they actually tell you, clearly and concisely, what has changed. Most ToS are intentionally made difficult to read to, you know, discourage people from reading them.
Forcing you to shut up or go to court isn’t great either, though.
On the big stuff where they’re liable for a lot of money and you might be able to get a pro bono lawyer, sure.
On the small stuff, though, the prospect of having to pay for a lawyer and likely have your case thrown out by a judge for not bring worth the expense and effort of suing a foreign company is probably going to deter a LOT of legitimate claims.
If, for example, I want to return a game in accordance with the rules and they won’t let me, I’m not gonna lawyer up and sue them from the other side of the Atlantic.
I appreciate this. That said, I was playing a game on my Steamdeck last night when this popped up over the game, while the game was running. Subsequently I died in the game. Kinda shit.
Yeah, I’m all for the move, but don’t be dicks about interrupting.
Still, right choice otherwise.
It popped up on my secondary monitor and I wasn’t using it, so I didn’t see it all day
Same, popped up while in the middle of Satisfactory
Can anyone ELI5 this to me? Arbitration is a big scary word that I don’t understand.
Instead of Steam forcing any disputes with them to go through an “impartial” 3rd party company they choose and pay for to oversee and rule on disputes, they are saying that disputes must go through the courts.
Basically forced arbitration has always been seen as anti-consumer and unfair because the company is paying for the arbitration and is thus considered more likely to be found in favor of. Steam is doing the opposite and as such this is seen as pro-consumer and a good thing
I was kinda worried when I saw the subject line of the email.
Steam is actually pretty decent, by company standards.
Yeah, but Gabe is down to 25% ownership.
He could be pushed out at anytime. It’s this weird situation where if a serious challenger to Steam really takes off, the 75% may demand Steam gets shittier to make more money.
But Gabe won’t last forever anyways, who knows what will happen without him. Which means people do want some kind of challenger to prevent a monopoly, but that just makes the other scenario more likely
Steam is already a huge outlier
Who owns the other 75% ?
Not sure, apparently the 25% figure is really new, Wikipedia is sourcing something from 2017 that says he has 50+.
This is the most up to date I can find that attributes a source
https://www.guru3d.com/story/microsoft-reportedly-readies-billion-bid-to-acquire-valve-steam/
Insights from Dior, a prominent figure in the Counter-Strike community, reveal that Gabe Newell owns less than 25% of Valve. This suggests that a significant portion of Newell’s wealth is tied to his equity in the company. The decision to sell Valve wouldn’t rest solely with Newell; numerous employees who likely hold stock options could also have a say through a voting process if an offer were made.
So it sounds like a lot was given to employees from the beginning, which track with Gabe.
Then he may have cashed out a couple times, but I doubt that when he could just do the billionaire thing where he borrows against his stock counting on the value increasing enough to pay off the last with a new?
But then again Gabe is different and might not do that out of principle.
It’s not publicly traded, so I guess we don’t really know unless Valve discloses who owns what. Which I just realized is pretty concerning on its own.
AFAIK, most of valve’s stock is held by employees, not private investors. It’s usually a pretty hard sell of “make the company you work at shittier to make more money”, especially since most of the employees probably know gabe personally (valve has less than 400 employees) and likely approve of his leadership.
As far as Gabe succession plans go, that’s a great good way to do it. You would need the majority of the employees’s shares to change something radically… That might actually work
It’s usually a pretty hard sell of “make the company you work at shittier to make more money”, especially since most of the employees probably know gabe personally (valve has less than 400 employees) and likely approve of his leadership.
And most of the ones with the high percent have been there since the beginning, probably close to Gabe’s age, looking towards retirement. They make good money, but retirement is expensive.
I mean. That link from this year said Microsoft was thinking 16 billion. 1% of that is 160 million.
Or they may die and their kids see dollar signs when a vote comes up
Steam is great now, it’s not debatable. But its naive to expect it indefinitely. 10 years, 20 years from now? It wouldn’t be surprising if Valve was a lot shittier than it is today
It won’t last forever
yeah, its hard to predict what will happen to it, especially after gabe steps down or dies, but depending on how much of the company is broadly owned by employees vs individuals, it can help to shield it from bad decisions. Unfortunately, we don’t know the exact numbers. If gabe + mike own 51+% then it could potentially lead to overriding employee will in a bad decision for money (either through their actions or through inheritance like you say). Or the employees could just collectively make a bad decision too.
It really feels like we’re peasants, gathered by the fire, gossiping fearfully about the prospect of a succession war
Well damn that’s going to bite gamers in the ass in the long term.
Not just decent, it’s one of the best companies to exist
I kind of did the opposite. I assumed the change would be negligible or in the customer’s benefit based on Valve’s track record. I hope this never changes.
Wow. Say what you want about them, but that is some good shit right there. I’ve been getting emails for months from some random fucks telling me about arbitration agreements, and steam releases this. One more reason to love the company.
As I saw in another post:
This is because a lot of individuals tried to start an arbitration process with valve and that got costly for Valve. So now they try to force everyone to do it in a different way.
More info in other posts:
Arbitration is always cheaper and faster than the courts, because the courts are very backed up especially since the pandemic, and there’s a lot of admin cost which doesn’t exist in arbitration. That is why almost every other company is trying to force arbitration. So if the goal was to save money, forcing court would have the opposite effect.
If you push everybody into a class action, it will be cheaper. Have you ever gotten more than a cent on the dollar from a class action settlement(unless you’re the class representative)? Sure the seem like the settlements are a lot of money, but if you can get the class action settled with very few claimants, no one will be able to sue over that particular issue again, so it puts it behind the company. Instead of being dogged by individuals for however long.
If you push everybody into arbitration, you’ve already got the arbitrator in your pocket and your costs will still be less than litigation in 99% of cases - even class action. I don’t think you understand just how long and expensive and unpredictable litigation can actually be, but I’ve brought suit before so I do. It took four and a half years to get an initial court date from first filing the complaint. Not the trial, just a date so the judge could hear the facts of the case and opening statements from attorneys. Four and a half years of paying my attorneys, as a private individual, with a lot less money than you might think. And they were giving me mate’s rates; I’ve worked with companies where the legal work billings were in the tens of thousands per day for a single participating law office. That shit is expensive.
Maybe Valve did this to fuck their customers, but they don’t really have a track record of that, and since in the majority of cases arbitration is without question an anti-consumer move, I’d say that if your aim is to paint Valve to be the villains for this then it’s going to be an uphill battle.
my wife got a few hundred bucks from a feminine hygiene product, unless you count that as “cents on the dollar” meaning a percentage of the final amount - in which case, that’s the case in every settlement.
My thought was that a lawsuit is more expensive than arbitration, but settling a class action lawsuit is cheaper than thousands of arbitrations.
IANAL, what does this mean?
It means you love anal.
Sorry, it’s Friday and i am silly.
A binding Arbitration would involve the submission of a dispute to a neutral party who hears the case and makes a decision.
Instead of solving the dispute in court before a judge and/or jury.
Filling fees for an arbitrator may be higher than filing a case in court.
Pre-printed consumer contacts with banks, credit card companies, automobile and home dealers usually use this.
Take it with a grain of salt , because also IANAL
Thank you fellow anal lover
arbitration pretty much provides zero benefit to the consumer and all benefit to the organization. a big piece is that if you sign off on an arbitration clause, then there’s no such thing as class action lawsuit anymore.
some companies make you sign a handwritten letter through snail mail just to opt out, because they don’t want anyone filing a lawsuit, and definitely dont’ want a lot of them filing together.
this is another case of corporations saying “this option is best!!” while leaving out the “for us” part
this is why it’s a big deal that steam said fuck that noise
If you have a dispute with Valve you have to hire a lawyer to take them to court. No “third party” mediation
Most disputes most likely fall far below the limit for small claims, where a lawyer is not required, or even allowed in many cases.
Isn’t it often in both parties to settle things out of court? For the one that’d sue it’s usually more money at less cost and the company gets around possibly having a bad precedent set and the bad publicity to potentially losing in court.
This is probably aimed at people creating issues in the hopes of getting a settlement for something that has a slim (but Nonzero) chance to hold up in court.
It’s a company - I think this aims at people only bringing serious claims and reducing the paperwork for them - but since it’s Valve people will glorify everything they do
Usually it’s forced arbitration, you can’t sue
It really favors the company. Steam is explicitly saying no arbitration which levels the playing field.
Arbitration doesn’t save money. You still need lawyers.
What’s bigger is this explicitly says it allows class actions. Something that most prevent and require individual arbitration, consumers are better off when they can pool resources for lawyers against a giant corporation, especially since most would require an upfront payment for a large class action.
Arbitration doesn’t save money. You still need lawyers.
of course - but usually it’s way faster than getting a proper court-ruling - and since lawyers are paid per hour that makes a big difference
I’ve literally never seen any person argue that forced arbitration is a good thing for consumers…
It’s always corporations
That’s because the arbitrators are hired by the company. Unless it’s an egregious situation, who’s going to side against the people signing their paycheck?
Oh, I’m fully aware it sucks, just not sure why that person is defending it
Forced Arbitration is when a company puts something in their terms of service that forced the user to go through a process of arbitration as opposed to going to court. It is always rigged towards the company who forces it, because they are the people paying the arbitrators.
I’m not a lawyer: Many companies are updating their terms requiring that disputes are settled through arbitration, usually where a 3rd party selected by the company rules on the disagreement.
It’s meant to protect them from excessive lawsuit payments that can happen when you go to court.
Valve went the other way, and is saying that all legal disputes should go to court instead.
